Thursday, June 27, 2024

 

Magic mushrooms are the most-used psychedelic drug



As states change laws, federal policymakers face urgent questions



Reports and Proceedings

RAND CORPORATION




Psilocybin mushrooms are the psychedelic substance most often used in the U.S., with its popularity outpacing other psychedelic drugs such as MDMA (known as ecstasy), according to a new RAND report.

 

Based on a new national survey, researchers found that about 12% of respondents reported using psilocybin at some point over their lives and 3.1% reported using the substance over the past year. An estimated 8 million American adults used psilocybin in 2023.

 

Psychedelic substances such as psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA long have been touted as holding promise for treating various mental health conditions, with enthusiasm about the substances growing during the past decade. Although clinical research continues to grow, less attention has focused on the changing policy landscape for some psychedelics.

 

The report, which looks broadly at emerging issues involving the use and supply of psychedelics for nonclinical purposes, suggests that as state and local officials ease regulations on the substances, federal policymakers must decide whether they want psychedelics to follow in the footsteps of the for-profit cannabis model or take another path.

 

“The current situation with psychedelics reminds me of where we were with cannabis policy 12 years ago” said Beau Kilmer, lead author of the report and a senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Now is the time for federal policymakers to decide if they want to shape these policy changes or stay on the sidelines.”

 

Researchers caution that there is concern that if efforts to expand non-clinical supply of psychedelics do not go well, it could generate a backlash that may have a chilling effect on research and potential therapeutic uses.

 

“Based on what happened with clinical research on psychedelics after the 1960s, this is not an idle concern,” said Kilmer, codirector of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

 

The RAND report is based on several sources of information, including a December 2023 survey of a representative sample of 3,791 American adults who were asked about their use of a variety of substances, including psychedelics. The survey included several questions specific to psilocybin use and how it was obtained. The researchers also analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

 

Researchers interviewed legal experts, policy advocates, regulators, clinical researchers, mental health providers, and representatives from organizations working in the emerging psychedelics industry for the U.S. and abroad. The work also included discussions with members of Indigenous communities about their spiritual medicines.

 

“Policy changes may affect Indigenous people who have longstanding traditions with certain spiritual medicines that are commonly referred to as psychedelics,” said Michelle Priest, coauthor of the report and an assistant policy researcher at RAND. “Engaging respectfully with Indigenous community members who are authorized to speak on these topics can help craft policies that benefit from generations of wisdom while protecting Indigenous rights.”

 

Despite the federal prohibition on supply and possession outside approved clinical research and some religious exemptions, some state and local governments are loosening their approaches to psychedelics, including approaches that legalize some forms of supply to adults for any reason.

 

For states considering alternatives to prohibiting the supply of psychedelics, the report highlights how there are many options besides the for-profit approach. For example, states could allow people to forage or grow their own, or allow them to join non-profit collectives or cooperatives. There also is the supervised use model that’s operating in Oregon for psilocybin and is expected to be up and running in Colorado in 2025.

 

One difference from cannabis policy debates, the researchers note, is the role of supervision in policy discussions surrounding psychedelics. Even in places that do not adopt the supervision model being implemented in Oregon and Colorado, policymakers will likely confront many decisions surrounding the regulation of facilitators and supervision settings.

 

The RAND report found that unlike people who use cannabis and many other drugs, those who use psychedelics typically do so infrequently. The RAND survey found that 0.9% of respondents reported using psilocybin during the past month, compared to 20% of respondents reporting cannabis use during the past month.

 

Researchers estimate that among all American adults, the total number of use days in the past month for cannabis was on the order of 650 million, whereas the comparable figure for hallucinogens was closer to 7 million.

 

Among those reporting past year use of psilocybin in the RAND survey, 47% reported microdosing the last time they used. Microdosing involves using small amounts of psilocybin or other psychedelics -- often 1/10th to 1/20th of a typical dose.

 

Researchers say one takeaway from the analysis is the extent to which infrequent users drive the market for psychedelics. For cannabis, the market for infrequent users is negligible, accounting for about 5% of the total use days in the past month. For psychedelics, that figure is closer to 60%.

 

“While price is a major policy lever when we think about regulating cannabis and alcohol, it will likely play a much smaller role for psychedelics since infrequent users currently drive the market and they tend to spend relatively little on these substances,” said Rajeev Ramchand, coauthor of the report and codirector of the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute.

 

The researchers found that when they were writing the report, it became clear how little has been published about the markets and patterns of use for many psychedelics -- especially psilocybin. They offer ideas for improving existing surveys such as the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and recommend conducting qualitative research (ideally longitudinally) with those who use psychedelics and those who produce and distribute these substances in legal or illegal settings.

 

Support for the study was provided by a gift to RAND from the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and internal RAND support.

 

Other authors of the study are Rhianna C. Rogers, Ben Senator and Keytin Palmer.

 

The RAND Social and Economic Well-Being division seeks to actively improve the health, and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world.

 

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries.

PALEONTOLOGY

Ammonites went out with a diverse bang—and not a long, slow fizzle—in the Late Cretaceous


A new study used museum collections to map ammonite diversity around the globe before their total extinction and found they were not in decline prior to their extinction alongside non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago


NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Ammonites basking under the Late Cretaceous sun. Artwork by Callum Pursall 

IMAGE: 

AMMONITES BASKING UNDER THE LATE CRETACEOUS SUN. ARTWORK BY CALLUM PURSALL  (@CPURSALL ON X)

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CREDIT: ARTWORK BY CALLUM PURSALL




Los Angeles, CA (June 27, 2024) —A new study published in the journal Nature Communications led by paleontologists at the University of Bristol along with a team of international researchers, including Dr. Austin Hendy, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, finds that instead of fizzling out ahead of their extinction, ammonoids were still going strong across the globe in the Late Cretaceous. Made possible by museum collections, the new study compared their diversity across the globe just prior to extinction, unearthing the complex evolutionary history of their final chapter for the first time.  

Ammonoids, marine mollusks often distinguished by their coiled shells, are one of paleontology’s great icons. They flourished in Earth’s oceans for more than 350 million years until their extinction during the same chance event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Some paleontologists, however, have argued the diversity of ammonites (the last major lineage of ammonoids) was declining well before their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period and that their demise was inevitable. 

“Ammonites had an amazing evolutionary history. With their formidable shells and powerful tentacles they innovated the act of swimming. They could grow to as big as a car or to just a few millimeters in diameter. They played equally disparate roles in their ecosystems, from predators near the top of the food web to filter feeding off plankton,” said Hendy.

“Understanding how and why biodiversity has changed through time is very challenging,” said lead author Dr. Joseph Flannery-Sutherland. “The fossil record tells us some of the story, but it is often an unreliable narrator. Patterns of diversity can just reflect patterns of sampling, essentially where and when we have found new fossil species, rather than actual biological history. Analyzing the existing Late Cretaceous ammonite fossil record as though it were the complete, global story is probably why previous researchers have thought they were in long-term ecological decline.”

To overcome this issue, the team assembled a new database of Late Cretaceous ammonite fossils to help fill in the sampling gaps in their record. “We drew on museum collections to provide new sources of specimens rather than just relying on what had already been published,” said co-author Cameron Crossan, a 2023 graduate of the University of Bristol’s Palaeobiology MSc program. “This way, we could be sure that we were getting a more accurate picture of their biodiversity prior to their total extinction.” 

Using their database, the team then analyzed how ammonite speciation—forming distinct new species—and extinction rates varied in different parts of the globe. If ammonites were in decline through the Late Cretaceous, then their extinction rates would have been generally higher than their speciation rates wherever the team looked. Instead, the team found that the balance of speciation and extinction changed both through geological time and between different geographic regions.

“These differences in ammonoid diversification around the world is a crucial part of why their Late Cretaceous story has been misunderstood,” said senior author Dr. James Witts of the Natural History Museum, London. “Their fossil record in parts of North America is very well sampled, but if you looked at this alone, then you might think that they were struggling while they were actually flourishing in other regions. Their extinction really was a chance event and not an inevitable outcome.”

Environmental Factors vs Competition
So, what was responsible for the continued success of ammonites through the Late Cretaceous? To answer this question, the team looked at potential factors that might have caused their diversity to change over time. They were particularly interested in whether their speciation and extinction rates were driven mainly by environmental conditions like ocean temperature and sea level or by biological processes like pressure from predators and competition between ammonites.

“What we found was that the causes of ammonite speciation and extinction were as geographically varied as the rates themselves,” said co-author Dr. Corinne Myers of the University of New Mexico. “You couldn’t just look at their total fossil record and say that it was driven entirely by changing temperature, for example. It was more complex than that and depended on where in the world they were living.”

“Palaeontologists are frequently fans of silver bullet narratives for what drove changes in a group’s fossil diversity, but our work shows that things are not always so straightforward,” Dr. Flannery Sutherland concluded.